Waiting for Clegg

Thursday’s general election may not be the most important in the history of the United Kingdom, but it’s sure as hell the most important in the history of my personal obsession with electoral reform.

There will be change in Britain after Thursday; that is certain. Only the nature of the change is in question. Will it be superficial and ephemeral, a matter of spending and taxing a little more of this and a little less of that? Or will it be fundamental and lasting—a kind of political genetic engineering, an evolutionary leap? If the U.K.’s outmoded electoral machinery translates a narrow plurality for the Conservative Party (based on their getting roughly a third of the popular vote) into an absolute Tory majority in parliament, the changes will be slight. But if the Liberal Democrats manage to win, say, half the seats to which their percentage of the vote ought to entitle them, then the change could be profound.

If the Lib Dems hold the balance, they will be indispensable to the formation of a new government. Whether they partner with Labour or the Tories, the price of their participation will be a path toward a referendum on making the electoral system more proportional. The details will be up for negotiation—there are many kinds of proportional voting systems, each with its own pluses and minuses—and there is no guarantee that a referendum would pass. But if the Mother of Parliaments were finally to rejuvenate herself, the change would rejuvenate throughout her offspring in the English-speaking world. The Australians and the New Zealanders have already made moves away from “first past the post” single-member, plurality winner-take-all districts, but the Canadians, the Indians, and the Americans need to get the message.

Meanwhile, three worth-a-look items from the Guardian and its Sunday sister the Observer:

1. The Guardian’s editorial supporting the Lib Dems, which says in part:

Proportional representation – while not a panacea – would at last give this country what it has lacked for so long: a parliament that is a true mirror of this pluralist nation, not an increasingly unrepresentative two-party distortion of it. The Guardian has supported proportional representation for more than a century. In all that time there has never been a better opportunity than now to put this subject firmly among the nation’s priorities. Only the Liberal Democrats grasp this fully, and only they can be trusted to keep up the pressure to deliver, though others in all parties, large and small, do and should support the cause. That has been true in past elections too, of course. But this time is different.

2. From today’s Observer, Will Hutton’s visionary argument for a time-limited Labour-Lib Dem coalition, with the Lib Dems’ Nick Clegg as Prime Minister and an agenda headed by “constitutional reform culminating in a referendum on introducing a proportional voting system and a promise to have a general election immediately afterwards.”